Hi Peter, hi Pain, and all,

I (there it is right away) am going to talk about what is 'right in front
of my nose'. Several piles and interleafings of papers, a monitor, this
keyboard, various hardwares and softwares, weavings of super 8mm films and
shredded books, the light switch (it's getting dark here and the switch is
down) postcards from friends and advertisements for shows and various
remeinders and framed objects on the wall that forms a temporary partial
barrier. Then to my right is a doorway onto a corridor along which friends
pass and in which children play or children are heard playing. I can hear
English and Indonesian being spoken. Someone is playing Tomb Raider on a
playstation, it was Command & Conquer about half an hour ago and this
console has just become available after someone dumped from their game of
X-Com. I can see part of a bicycle in the corridor and the Japanese writing
on a white paper carrier bag. The door to the room is pinned back by a
watepaper basket that spills over into poster tubes, catalogues and piles
of books. This door has been extensively scribbled on with red, green,
yellow and blue felt tip pens. I don't have a CD playing. The only sound is
of childrens voices (this is 9.30 on a sunday evening), the muffled schlick
of passing cars and the soundtrack for Lara.

If I start talking about these things again using relatively plain english
('Scientists Teach chimpanzee To Speak English' it states on the cover of
today's paper) I'd talk about stacks and piles of information, tools for
processing, working environments for writing and communication, overlapping
frames, strata, broken views, interpentrating spaces, funnels, partial
obscurities, erasures, signs for something else (the light switch),
conduits (this technology), machines for transformation and distribution of
transformations (this technology). I see other people on occasion.
Sometimes they come and talk to me whilst I'm doing things like this.
Sometimes I leave the room for a cup of coffee downstairs or to water
plants or to answer the phone or the get something for the kids or for a
walk on the beach or to chat. This is not private. This is a performance
venue and I am busy trying to perform in it by this attempt to answer some
direct questions in as direct way as possible.

I might tell you more about myself, where I come from, how I got here, who
I hang out with, what I like, what I don't give so much time to or nurture
in preference to that which I give keenest attention to and so forth.

i really don't see where any of this gets 'us'. It bores me, as much as the
Andrews list does btw, and it must be boring you. I'd guess that this is
not what is being asked for.

Perhaps I should be doing something for my ailing 'soul' - it must be
ailing or I wouldn't be giving time to do this kind of mechanical thing.
Here, typing, thinking, framing, phrasing, suggesting, responding.

Last week at this time I'd just come off a stage, here in Lowestoft,
playing at a benefit we organised for the Kosovo Refugee Lorries Appeal.
Over 1000 people turned up, of all ages, and stayed for over 9 hours of
music, movement-theatre and poetry. Over eleven hundred pounds was raised,
almost enough to send one lorry of clothing piled up in a warehouse under a
mile away. When I write I what do I mean? When I read I whom am I reading?

Surely it is worth trying to moderate or mediate between the inevitable I
of the writer (brand name) and the artistic ego or the mystique of the
artist, the mysterious process of creativity and all that tired bullshit.
If I write I it is to ask such questions about viewpoint. I changes. For
whom am I speaking?

Last night I sat with several friends watching a film made for the Gypsy
Council by Jeremy Sandford (who produced 'Cathy Come Home'). There was the
head of the gypsy council reading one or two of his poems. The friend who'd
brought the video (he'd come over from Burton to show it and eat and chat
- a 5 hour drive), said that although the poems were mawkish they were
heartfelt. I know what he meant, but that doesn't mean that they were
'good'. He agreed with that too. They were straight forward identity-based,
statements of solidarity. I didn't disagree with the sentiments but I did
find them uninteresting as poems. Dull agitprop. They ryhmed (nothing wrong
with that I like and make extensive use of rhyme too), they had a waltzing
rhythm as if played by a clunk clunk karaoke machine (so whilst I love and
make extensive use of rhythm the rhythms of these poems palled). He was
obviously saying things that anybody watching or there at the Stow-on-the
Wold horse fair could understand. It was all plain surface. What artifice
they showed was de-energising rather than mobilising of any response. A
debilitating listen. It tld me nothing i didn't already know. It switched
me off instead of switching me on.

There was however a singer called Ted Atkinson that I found very effective.
Singing a strident and plaintive song whilst walking straight into the
camera (itself moving backwards with steadycam) along a road through the
fair. The words to the song were articulating clear statements about romany
identity and romany life but the combined effect of the singing and the
walking and the shifting foreground and background, together with the
passionate sincerity of the singer's delivery, measured and varied, was for
all of us in that room (I know this because we all remarkewd on it and
talked about it again this morning), much more engaging than the combined
staticity of the poetry.

I want that combined effect from poetry. A sense of sense and of senses
being engaged, of the presentation being appropriate, of interplays between
foregrounds / backgrounds / positions / meanings / registers of rhythmical
tone and rhyming vocabulary and incisive, sometimes carnivalesque syntax.
That the revolts in the writing are between the writings and the readings.
That such revolts suggest possibilities for social and societal behaviours
that are not duty bound in their complicities with how things are. That the
things that are in front of my nose tonite will not seem so 'plain' in the
morning.

(not that they are indeed)

love and love
cris





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